This got a little bit of attention in the both the Switch thread and the Little Indie Games Worth Knowing About (Probably) thread:
I’ve been playing it for a while and I agree with @LMN8R, don’t overlook this one. So I figured it deserved its own thread for visibility.
In reading about it, I realized there have been a handful of “pinball platformers” in the past, but I don’t think I’ve ever tried one, so the concept of a pinball kind of metroidvania is novel to me.
I’m 40% complete on the Switch version, and I’m really digging it, though it’s not quite what I expected. I see why it gets compared to metroidvanias, there’s a lot of open world traversal gated by things you need to return to later with new abilities, but so far there’s never any combat or conflict in the exploration. You’re either wandering and exploring, or you’re bouncing around chutes and tunnels and bumpers in the more straightforward pinball areas—typically trying to collect enough doo-dads to unlock another corridor to explore.
You’re moving seamlessly in the world between the normal areas and the little pinball areas, controlling the ball directly (you’re a little dung beetle postman riding and pushing a ball around) and via flippers in the environment in both situations, though the flippers are doing almost all the work in the pinball sections.
I don’t know if I would recommend it to someone who wants an actual pinball game, because in what I’ve played so far, the pinball areas aren’t very complex (compared to my limited experience with some Zen pinball tables), and there’s no element of scoring at all. I doubt this is going to be Tom’s cup of tea.
And outside of the pinball sections, it’s a weird, relaxing little game that in the first hour or two walked just up to the edge of the line that separates “chill” from “boring”, but it’s won me over. I spent at least an hour more than I intended to playing it last night, promising I was going to stop just as soon as I delivered the next package or arrived at the next objective, only to be drawn a little further to see what was next.
If you’re curious about it, I hope you take a chance on it.